On the University of Coimbra in the 19th century - symbolic capital and institutional memory

Abstract

In what concerns the University of Coimbra, the author had already shown, in a previous work, how the institutional pattern shaped by Pombal's Reform had lasted as a fundamental organising frame in which the constitutionalist reforms had been inscribed. The causes have been partly searched in the very nature of this Reform and in the specific conditions of its achievement. Now the author goes deeper in her analysis and points out some signs of a different kind of perdurability. Kept in the University archives, the Reform subsisted as a glorious gesture, and became a symbolic capital very often used by the University of Coimbra, all along the 19^th century, in its strategies of defence, enhancement and self -consecration.